Election Night Viewing Includes Web’s Bells and Whistles

For those who seek out their election news today from the main broadcast networks and cable news channels, the most striking change since 2004 may be the enormous increase in supplemental material that those news organizations will be offering on their Web sites, away from viewers’ TV screens.

CNN, for example, will gather 20 of the most viewed and opinionated bloggers, including representatives from The Huffington Post (which typically tilts left) and Red State (more right) at a Washington Internet cafe known as Tryst. There, they will sit under enormous video screens — showing CNN, of course — while pounding out their reactions to the results for cnn.com.

By seeking to cater to viewers on the Web, CNN and other news organizations acknowledge that they could be diverting some attention from their television coverage — which, in the case of the three main broadcast networks, will include live prime-time specials led by their principal anchors.

But their online strategies may carry an even bigger risk. In seeking to appropriate the swagger and lawlessness of the blogosphere under the imprimatur of the so-called mainstream media, the broadcast news organizations may increase the chances of letting out information early on the Web — projected winners drawn from exit poll data, for example — that they have pledged to keep off the air on their main television outlets.

Broadcast and cable news organizations have agreed to a plan that will embargo information from exit polls, as commissioned by a media consortium, until 5 p.m. Eastern time. Only a few representatives from the major news organizations will have access during the day to a room in which that material will be tabulated, and to see it they will have to surrender cellphones and pagers. Once the embargo is lifted, the networks have promised to report only general trends in voting — such as turnout, or voters’ mentions of the war in Iraq — and not to forecast any winners based on that data before polls have closed.

But those blogs to which many of the news organizations will link during the afternoon and evening may not feel bound by such pledges, a situation that raises the possibility that a Web site like msnbc.com could serve as a means for visitors to learn how a race may be heading before any official results have been released.

“You can’t pretend something isn’t happening,” said Jennifer Sizemore, editor in chief of msnbc.com. “If something happens from other sources, we’ll report that, even though we may say the information is unreliable. We’re not going to be a walled garden.”

Similarly, Matt Margolis — whose Massachusetts election blog, hubpolitics.com, will be linked to abcnews.com via America Online on Tuesday night — said he could not rule out trying to break news on his site based on the exit polls or other raw data.

“I would expect that if I got the information, other people are getting the same information,” said Mr. Margolis, who also runs the site blogsforbush.com. “If people get access to that information and can’t put it out, and can get it to the blogs, there will be a trend of people leaking this out through the blogs. Because the media can’t.”

Driving the networks’ online efforts are the opportunities to reach viewers who might not otherwise turn on a television on election night (an increasing possibility, as television news viewership falls each year) and to offer them new, often interactive technologies that are simply not available through a traditional cable box.

In anticipation of the election, executives at several networks said they had added producers, writers and others to their Web sites, and in some instances had even temporarily diverted staff from the broadcast networks themselves. Michael Clemente, executive producer of ABC News Digital Media, said that the 100 or so people who typically work on the news division’s Web operation would be supplemented on election night by as many as 15 more people — including several borrowed from the network’s news magazines.

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ABC will use its Web site, abcnews.com, not only as a forum for exclusive online reports from Charles Gibson, George Stephanopoulos, Mark Halperin and Jake Tapper among others, but also to showcase field reports from students stationed on more than 40 college campuses. The network has armed each with a camera tethered to a cellphone or laptop to gauge the reactions of young voters. (One of these correspondents is Allison Pataki, a senior at Yale University whose father is the outgoing governor of New York; however tantalizing the prospect, the network says she is unlikely to be paired online with Chris Cuomo of “Good Morning America,” whose father, Mario, was unseated by Allison’s father 12 years ago.)

CBS News expects to make available actual results from every House, Senate and gubernatorial race in the country on its Web site, cbsnews.com, soon after polls close. All of that material will be continuously and automatically updated with proprietary software that the network’s sports division typically uses to revise player statistics during professional football games, said Michael Sims, director of news operations for the site.

Meanwhile, Jon Scott, who will be leading the coverage on Fox News Radio on election night, will be heard, as well as seen, in a simulcast on foxnews.com, said Marty Ryan, executive producer of political programs for Fox News. Fox will also draw on the coverage of another Web site, realclearpolitics.com, a compendium of election reports from around the country that typically features a range of voices.

Msnbc.com, which serves as an online beachhead for both NBC News and the MSNBC cable news channel, is touting what it calls its “Democracy Dashboard,” which will include not only a map linked to key races but also a graphic made out to look like a car’s gauge, albeit one toggling between Republicans and Democrats, “with a needle to say where the balance of power is heading,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, vice president of digital media for NBC News.

Mr. Lukasiewicz himself is one reflection of how the balance of power has shifted among the news organizations, with an increasing emphasis on the Web sites. Two years ago during the presidential election, he was the executive producer of NBC’s television coverage. Now he is running the digital side.

Though the MSNBC channel is typically watched by fewer viewers than Fox News and CNN, its Web site ranked ahead of both outlets among visitors in September. Msnbc.com drew 26.7 million visitors, according to Nielsen Media Research, 2 million more than cnn.com (24.7 million) and considerably more than Fox News (7.9 million.) Over the same period, ABC News drew 10.7 million to its Web site, while CBS News had 8.7 million. (In another measurement important to advertisers, users of the CNN site click onto nearly twice as many pages as those at MSNBC, its nearest competitor.)

Mr. Clemente of ABC said that he felt confident that the material distributed via its Web site would conform with the standards and practices of the broadcast network — in large part because the same network executives will be overseeing all of that content. If, for example, the ABC Web site included a link to a blog that decided to post material that did not meet the requirements of the broadcast network, that link would simply be removed, Mr. Clemente said.

“That’s the difference between this and YouTube,” he said. “It’s not a complete free-for-all.”

And what of the risk that the networks might be driving some viewers away from watching their TV’s, where advertising premiums are highest, to log on to the Web?

Jon Klein, president of CNN domestic networks, said, “We find that most people who are news consumers do both at the same time.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Election Night Viewing Includes Web’s Bells and Whistles. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe